


a song to make your heart remember me

by lovealwayskatie



Series: a melody inside my head [2]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: F/M, long distance in college ouch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24238132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovealwayskatie/pseuds/lovealwayskatie
Summary: Ricky moves into college two days after Nini leaves for Boston. / companion piece to "a melody inside my head rings your name" in which Ricky and Nini tackle long distance
Relationships: Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Series: a melody inside my head [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749454
Comments: 16
Kudos: 99





	a song to make your heart remember me

**Author's Note:**

> wrote 5k of something else, hated it, and now we’re here! technically a follow up to "a melody inside my head rings your name" but i think stands on its own too! title is from one direction’s “I want to write you a song.”
> 
> i have a thousand rini ideas but spotty motivation, so idk give me some prompts or ideas that you want to see and hold me accountable?

Ricky moves into college two days after Nini leaves for Boston, and the whole day is a bit of a chaotic blur, his dad, mom and Todd whirling in and out of his dorm building, running errands to Target, unpacking boxes, making coffee runs and yet managing to hover over him regardless.

His room is small, but he’s pretty sure that’s the entire point of college dorms, and his standard issue bed, desk and personal belongings are basically shoved into a corner. His roommate’s name is Will, and he’s from San Diego. He brought a TV for their room, and their dorm building is minutes away from one of the dining halls—it’s kind of the entire reason they ranked it first on their housing forms—so all in all, it’s not a bad set up.

All of the adults cycle through goodbye hugs twice, and he tells his mom to text him before their flight out to Chicago tomorrow morning and after they land, and he tells his dad to text him a picture of his dinner, and if he orders in, please at least get a vegetable.

And after they leave, he and Will sit on their respective twin beds, just kind of staring at each other. He’s never shared a room with a stranger before—which he would think is a normal thing, but then it’s just accepted as common practice that when every 18-year-old heads off to college, they’re abandoned on their own as a flimsy excuse of an adult to fend for themselves and sleep three feet away from complete strangers? Sure.

“So, you play guitar?” Will asks, pointing to the case, and Ricky nods. He’d set up the instrument in the corner, kind of questioning why he brought it in the first place. It isn’t like he’s going to be that dumb college guy cliché that everyone hates, playing “Wonderwall” on the quad.

Will points to the picture of Ricky and Nini from graduation tacked onto his bulletin board. Her mom had taken dozens of pictures that day, but this was his favorite: she’s looking straight at the camera, laughing with a hand on her head to keep her mortarboard from flying off in the breeze, but he’s smiling at her, an arm draped over his shoulders. They hadn’t even been dating yet when they took this picture, but it didn’t matter. His thirteen years of adoration for her is written plainly on his face. “Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, Nini,” he says, unable to stop the smile that appears on his face. “She goes to Berklee in Boston.”

“Cool,” Will replies.

Ricky nods. Being able to call Nini his girlfriend? Kind of the coolest thing in his life.

\---

He ends up tagging along with Will and two other guys from their hall, Harry and Columbus—he’s pretty sure the latter is a nickname but doesn’t press—to dinner.

That night, they end up at an off-campus party that Harry knows about from his older brother, a junior on UCLA’s baseball team, and they stand in a corner, sipping cheap, metallic-tasting beer from plastic cups and talking to mostly each other but a few other guys. It’s kind of awkward at first but winds up being fun enough. Once they’re all a couple beers in, Ricky watches as Harry’s brother convinces him to do a keg stand, which he does with moderate success, and Columbus makes out with a girl in the middle of the makeshift dance floor, and they all walk back to their dorm together after, criss-crossing across the paved walkways.

“College fucking _rocks_ ,” Will says, before his head hits his pillow, and Ricky laughs, pressing send on his goodnight text to Nini.

\---

Once classes start, he settles into a routine easily.

He’s in his general requirement courses right now, like most freshmen and also because he hasn’t declared what he wants to major in yet. His classes are spread out across campus and held in massive lecture halls with hundreds of students crammed into rows. Professors don’t even take attendance at UCLA, but they do in Nini’s classes—or really, they don’t even have to. Her classes are small—intimate, she calls them—and all of her instructors know her by name pretty quickly. The way she describes it, it’s hard not to feel like a teeny, tiny fish in a massive UCLA-shaped pond, but he’s grateful to maintain some level of invisibility. She’s always loved school while he’s simply wanted to skate through, so he thinks that their divergent college experiences fit them.

On the second week of classes, UCLA holds an Org Fair where over a hundred different student groups and activities are set up on the quad, and students, mostly freshmen, wander around aimlessly, listening to upper classmen prattle on about the value of joining the Student Government Association or French Club. He sticks with Harry and Columbus as they walk up and down the rows of tables, and when he sees sign ups for acapella group auditions, he thinks of Nini. He ends up not putting his name down on any interest sheets.

Thursday nights are date nights.

They text all the time, just like they did back home which helps dull the weird ache he feels being so far away from her for the first time in his life, and they talk on the phone most days, usually when he’s heading back to his dorm after dinner and when she’s winding down for the night. But on Thursdays, they block off at least an hour to FaceTime from their laptops, and the first Thursday, Nini instructs him to make microwave mac and cheese. She does, too, and they eat their respective fluorescent orange meals together. He knows it’s dumb, but he really does feel closer to her eating the same dinner together over video chat.

Tonight, they do pizza, and he packs up two slices from the dining hall before leaning back against his pillows, his laptop on his knees. He smiles when he accepts her request to video chat, and she appears, her hair piled into a bun on the top of her head and the sleeves of her crimson Berklee sweatshirt pushed up on her forearms.

They always start by sharing three things that they did that day, so he tells her about the paper that he’s working on, playing frisbee on the quad with Will and Harry, and the squirrel he saw on campus that stole a celery stick with peanut butter on it from a girl eating her lunch outside. College campus squirrels are bold.

“Now you go,” he says.

And she tells him about her music theory class, the new off-campus ramen place that she tried with her roommate, and the touring production of Waitress coming to Boston next week that she’s going to with a few of the kids from her program.

“I miss you,” she concludes softly, an unspoken fourth thing that they always do on Thursdays, and she gives him a sad smile. They’ve almost been in school a month. It’s felt like the fastest month of his life, seeing how completely new his world is now, like he got plucked from Salt Lake City and dropped in the middle of a whole new existence without a trace of the former. But when he talks to Nini, it feels like the longest month of his life, stretching on for eternity with no sign of Thanksgiving Break in sight. “I miss you so much.”

He runs his fingers along the edge of his laptop and wishes that it helped him feel closer to her, but it’s not the same. “I miss you, too.”

\---

He’s assigned a general advisor, Ms. Ortiz, since he hasn’t declared a major yet. She’s a professor in the Education department and can’t be out of her early thirties yet. For their first meeting, she suggests that they meet at one of the coffee shops on campus to get to know one another outside of her office and learn more about his academic interests. He knows that it’s a trap to try to get him to figure out his future and pick a major. He’s not sure he even _has_ academic interests, but he accepts the free coffee.

They take a two-seat table in the back, and she asks him where he’s from and how his classes are going this semester.

“They’re fine,” he says, listing them off: the essay writing class that UCLA requires all freshmen to take, statistics, American History, Biology for Non-Majors.

“Any one that you like in particular?” He shrugs because no, not really, and she tries again. “Any classes in high school that you liked in particular?”

He shrugs again and takes a sip of his coffee. “I liked music,” he answers finally even though that was a hobby, not even a class he ever participated in. He quickly adds, “But I don’t want to like, study music or do it for a living. That’s my girlfriend’s thing.”

Ms. Ortiz smiles. “Your girlfriend, does she go here?”

He shakes his head, answering, “She goes to Berklee College of Music. Hence music being her thing, not mine.” He tries to make it a joke, but it’s kind of awkward. Advisor meetings are officially awkward, he decides then.

But then she asks how he likes his roommate and dorm building, effectively steering the subject away from his “academic interests,” and even if it’s only for the time being, he’s grateful.

\---

Even with as much as they talk daily, he still misses Nini all the time.

He misses all of his friends from high school. It’s not like he doesn’t have friends at UCLA. He knows that he lucked out with Will as a roommate. They both like Twenty One Pilots and playing FIFA for hours on Sundays, and he likes Harry and Columbus, too. He studies with a girl from his biology class, Kayleigh, who willingly listens to him talk about Nini for hours in between identifying cell organelles and breaking down photosynthesis.

But he hasn’t had the same amount of time or the extensive history with his college friends that he has with his friends from Salt Lake. He misses late nights at Cat’s Cradle Diner and passing hours at Ashlyn’s house and Call of Duty marathons with Big Red in his basement, eating nothing but salt and vinegar chips and orange soda. He even misses Gina’s sharp jabs and Carlos’s insistence on dropping into the splits at every high school dance.

He never thought he would count the days until he’s back in Salt Lake City, but he does one day, figuring out how far away he is from his Thanksgiving Break, and the number sticks in his mind: sixty-two days.

\---

They all go together to a party at Harry’s brother’s house, and the thudding bass reverberates through the floors. Ricky plays beer pong downstairs, partnered with Columbus, and they go on a winning streak, commandeering the table for three rounds in a row.

“This isn’t fair,” a girl with honey blonde hair whines after the dynamic duo wins a fourth game, high fiving gleefully.

Her friend nods solemnly. “Seriously. Can we at least swap partners so someone else has a chance of winning?”

That’s how Ricky winds up paired with Maggie, the one with dark waves and bright red lipstick. They’re actually winning after he sinks another ball, but he catches the other girl, Julia, placing her hands on Columbus’s bicep repeatedly, twirling a lock of her hair around her finger, letting him stand behind her and help her make her next shot, his hand on hers. The game devolves pretty quickly after that, and they leave to dance, leaving Ricky to smile awkwardly at Maggie.

“So, do you always get ditched that quickly?” she asks. “Or is that strictly my friend’s influence?”

He laughs and sways on his feet, mostly from discomfort and somewhat from alcohol. “I’m actually surprised I lasted that long without getting ditched.”

Maggie nods knowingly but then he catches her looking him up and down, and it takes a second too long for him to realize that she’s fully and definitively checking him out. “I have a hard time believing that,” she says finally.

He swallows thickly, unsure of how to respond to that.

She looks up at him through her eyelashes. “We could go—” She starts, gesturing to the stairs that lead to where everyone is dancing, and their friends are definitely making out.

“Actually,” he cuts her off and takes a step backward, a loud crunch emitting from under his foot as he does. He lifts his foot to see an abandoned and now crushed ping pong ball on the floor. “I have a girlfriend.”

Maggie opens her mouth then closes it.

“So, I should probably just go,” he continues, and he doesn’t wait for her to respond before walking up the stairs and dragging a protesting Will out of the party as fast as he can.

\---

He puts off a paper for his history class until the night before it’s due and holes up in the library in one of the cubicles, working through the minimum ten-page requirement well into the night. But he really doesn’t have anything else to say about Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party after six pages, and as he blinks sleepily at his laptop screen, he feels the inexplicable urge to cry.

He wishes that he could call Nini or his dad or even his mom, but it’s too late in each of their respective time zones to do so. He can’t believe that he went to a school so far from home, so far from Nini, and he’s so tired, currently and kind of all the time.

He tries to remember why he picked UCLA and not Utah State with Big Red, racking his brain to remember the college application process or his first campus tour, and his heavy, muffled brain can’t come up with anything. Had he let his life barrel on forward while he stood behind the steering wheel, not even touching it? That feels entirely probable right now.

Since it’s past midnight, he ticks off one less day in his mental countdown to Thanksgiving Break, back to Salt Lake and his friends and family.

\---

This Thursday includes Chinese food and Nini telling him all about the composition that she’s working on in class, only pausing when Will enters their room, dropping off his backpack.

“Hi Will,” she calls out, and even though her voice is a little tinny through his laptop, his roommate stops and tilts his head to get a look at the screen.

“Hey Nini,” he says with a wave. He still has his keys in hand and jacket on. He has club soccer practice on Thursdays, so his guest appearances at date night are sporadic and short-lived, but from what she’s seen of him, Ricky knows that Nini likes his roommate. They even follow each other on Instagram for reasons that Ricky can’t explain but enjoys. It makes his worlds feel slightly more connected. “I liked that song you posted yesterday,” Will continues.

Nini beams. It was a cover of an old Radiohead song that she liked, all stripped down for her acoustic guitar.

Will checks the time on his phone and groans. “And I’m late already, so I’ll let you two get back at it.” Ricky waves goodbye as his roommate hauls his gym bag over his shoulder and rushes out the door.

He turns back to Nini and her new composition. “Will you play it for me?”

He misses a thousand and one things about Nini, but at the top of the list is her music. He’s always known how talented she is from the very first song that she ever wrote about fluffy clouds and bright blue skies, and over the years, he’d gotten addicted to watching and listening to her play, requesting song after song. It didn’t even matter which one—he’d gladly let her sing his math homework back to him.

She humors him, and he watches her now, playing her song for class on the keyboard in her lap, and he smiles, enjoying as the music continues on.

\---

Midterms come and go, and Ms. Ortiz tells him that he needs to begin reviewing the course catalogue for next semester since registration will open sooner than he thinks.

Will is seated at his desk, working on his macroeconomics assignment, while Ricky lays on his stomach on his bed, scrolling through the hundreds and hundreds of course descriptions offered in the spring. He thinks it’s ridiculous—how is he supposed to be thinking about his next set of classes when he can barely survive the ones he’s in? All this semester has solidified is that he definitely doesn’t want to be a history or biology major. Hardly shocking.

“How did you know that you wanted to be a business major?” Ricky asks his roommate suddenly, and Will turns in his chair. He never studies with headphones in, saying that music is too distracting, and Ricky can’t imagine not being able to listen to music while he works.

Will shrugs. “My dad suggested it. Said it would give me options, and I shadowed him at work one day, and it seemed decent enough.” Then he turns back to his work as if describing the future path of the rest of his life as “decent enough” isn’t deeply depressing.

\---

His birthday falls on a Friday this year. He always wakes up to a good morning text from Nini, but on his birthday, he wakes up to a lengthy message wishing him happy birthday and a reminder to stop by the campus mailroom to check for a package that she sent him.

He receives a slew of other happy birthday wishes, and the group chat with all of his high school friends pings every few minutes with texts as they’re spread out across time zones. For birthdays, his R.A. decorates residents’ doors, so on his way out to his 9 a.m. class, he trips over a balloon, nearly popping it, and gets tangled in crepe paper streamers.

After his class, he’s on his way to the student center to swing by the mailroom as instructed when Nini calls him.

“Happy birthday,” she cheers in his ear. “Did you get your surprise yet?”

“I’m actually on my way there now.”

“Right now?” she asks insistently. “How far are you?”

He raises an eyebrow at her tone even though she can’t see him. He passes a few folding tables that student organizations can sign up to man, selling event tickets and pushing their latest fundraiser to passersby. “Not that far?”

He turns the corner and pauses, the hand holding the phone to his ear falling to his side when he sees her. By now, she’s unmistakable to him, and she’s here. At UCLA, in the student center, phone to her ear, weekend bag slung on her shoulder, surveying her surroundings, looking for but not yet spotting him.

“Nini?” he whispers, his heart thudding in his ears, and even though there’s no way she hears it, she turns then and lights up when she sees him, a smile breaking her face wide open.

“Ricky,” she squeals and takes off running, dropping her belongings on the ground, not taking notice of the other students that pause to stare at them. She throws herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and legs around his waist, and he’s not sure if it’s this or seeing her here, actually _here_ for real, for real, that nearly knocks the air out of him.

He snakes his arms around her to keep her close, trying to confirm to his short circuiting brain that, yes, she is literally and physically here, and he buries his face in her hair, murmuring, “Are you sure this is real life?”

Giggling, she pulls back and disentangles herself from him, landing lightly on her feet. “Can confirm this is real life.”

As they walk back to his dorm together hand in hand, his thumb traces circles on the back of her hand as a consistent reminder that she’s here, and she tells him that her trip had been in the works for weeks, coordinating with Will to know his schedule and where she could logically trick him into going to surprise him. “Consider this your birthday present from my moms, too,” she says as he swipes into his building. “They helped pay for the plane ticket.”

They get to his currently empty room, and Nini sets down her bag, taking in the space: the stack of textbooks on his desk, the pictures of herself and their friends on the walls, a Utah Jazz pendant above his bed. He looks at her, trying to spot any differences. Her hair is a little longer than when he said goodbye to her at the airport, and unlike her recent Instagram photos, which feature her bundled up in thick sweaters amid a Boston fall, she’s back in a sundress. Despite it being October, it’s still in the seventies in Los Angeles.

“So,” she says, climbing to sit criss-cross on the edge of his navy comforter. “Will’s going to be back from his classes any minute, right?”

Ricky shakes his head, grinning as he recalls the text from his roommate earlier—he’d thought it was weird at the time, but knowing that he was scheming with Nini to surprise him, it clicks into place. He takes his place next to her on the bed. “Nope. Said he had a group project to work on in the library and that he, under no circumstances, would even touch the doorknob of our room until 6:05 p.m.”

“I like Will,” she says, bringing her hand up to trace his jaw as they inch closer. Her touch feels like a jump start for his body, sending a shockwave down to his toes, and while he’s always burned beneath the surface from every touch and every kiss, right now it feels like a fire raging through him after missing her for so long.

Ricky nods very seriously and whispers back, “Me, too. I love Will.”

He beams at the smile that his comment elicits from her and feels stupidly giddy when he threads a hand through her hair and finally closes the distance between them, finally getting to kiss her again and immediately realizing that he won’t be able to stop anytime soon.

\---

Over the weekend, he takes her around to all his favorite spots on campus, including the tree he likes to study under, the best pizza place within walking distance of his dorm, even the library makes it into the tour.

“It’s all very California,” she declares, which makes him laugh, because he’s pretty sure that UCLA looks very much like a lot of other non-California college campuses.

She meets his friends—Will _hugs_ her when they meet—and they play Mario Kart all together on Friday night, in which Nini crushes them all especially on Rainbow Road, and Harry drives them all to In-N-Out for dinner on Saturday. Nini takes one bite and practically moans. “I’ve missed you so much,” she says to her burger. “Shake Shack just isn’t the same, no matter what they say.”

It’s fun, and he’s happy but not surprised that she likes his friends and that they like her. But his favorite part isn’t even exactly one part. He gets to do all the little things that he didn’t even realize that he missed—like when he has an arm around his shoulder and gets to play with the ends of her hair or when she puts her feet in his lap while they watch a movie.

They brush their teeth side by side in the communal bathroom, sharing his toothpaste and a minty kiss when they’re done, and after, she climbs into his bed, snuggling close. It’s the first time they’ve ever slept together—and sleeping is all they do, because Will is like, right there, come on—and it’s so normal, something he hopes he can take for granted one day but for now, feels like a birthday miracle.

Wrapped together in his comforter, they face one another, his arms looped around her waist to keep her close, and she has her hands balled up into fists, tucked under her chin. He thinks she’s asleep, and he knows Will’s asleep by his slow, even breathing when she whispers, “My sweatshirt is going to smell like you again.”

He opens one eye, squinting at her, but her eyes are still shut tight. “That’s a good thing, right?”

She cuddles closer, her next words murmured into his chest. “It’s the best thing.”

\---

Halloween in college is a full three-day affair. He bounces around to a few different parties on campus with his friends and scrolls through his Instagram feed the next morning, which is filled with everyone’s Halloween costumes and appropriately punny captions.

“You’re so whipped,” Columbus tells him when he sees Ricky’s costume for Saturday night, but Ricky just shrugs. If this is Columbus’s definition of whipped, he will be, gladly so, but this was actually his idea.

The next day, when his hangover has mostly subsided and he’s eating greasy bacon and scrambled eggs in the dining hall with a far more suffering Will, he gets a notification that he’s been tagged in a picture on Instagram.

It’s a picture of Nini in black cat ears and a drawn-on set of whiskers, and she’s holding a cut out of his own face, pointing at it with an open-mouthed grin. Back in his room, he has his own cut out of her face, glued onto a stick, that he’d insisted on carrying around all last night and pieces of his costume, a tie and a dress shirt with three paper circles taped down the right side, lay in a heap. Screw Columbus, because he thinks that long distance three-hole punch Jim Halpert and black cat Pam Beesly is one of his better ideas to date.

\---

Spring semester registration opens in three days, and Ricky has nothing figured out. He has a paper due tomorrow and reading for his history class and an entire career path to try and figure out, and when a rush of nausea and what feels like fire ants except they’re inside every fiber of his body _and is that even possible_ overwhelms him, he starts crying in the library before he can stop himself.

He hastens to pack up, shoving crumpled papers and his laptop in his bag, and blinks to try to stop the tears, but he can’t, and the blinking only makes the tears come faster, and he can’t get out of the library quick enough.

Nini’s voice is thick with sleep when she answers his call. “Ricky?”

It hits him that it’s past midnight in Boston, nearing 1 a.m. He hadn’t even realized; his fingers had gone to her contact in his phone and pressed call before he’d even thought about what he was doing. “Sorry— _sorry_ , I know it’s late, but I didn’t—”

She cuts him off, her voice clearer this time. “Ricky, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

He stops and tries to take a deep breath, but the attempt makes him feel like he’s choking. “Outside the library?”

She’s silent for a moment before saying slowly, “Okay. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Her voice sounds so steady in his ears, and he leans back against the library’s brick exterior, not answering her for a few seconds. He crouches to a seated position, back still against the brick and his legs stretched out in front of him. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says finally. “I don’t know what I want to study, and I need to pick a major, like yesterday, and I’m not good at anything, and I don’t even _like_ anything other than you.”

She laughs at his last comment. “That’s not true.”

It’s kind of true.

“You like your friends and your family and music and skateboarding and half-hour comedies and making people happy, and you’re good at a lot of things,” she says. “I think you could do practically anything you want to.” She pauses then adds, “But I’d skip out on pre-med given that you won’t even _watch_ Grey’s Anatomy. But basically anything else, I think you could do.”

He doesn’t really agree with her—except the Grey’s Anatomy thing, that’s true. He doesn’t even like having to go to the doctor when he needs to, so why would he want to watch them on TV? His voice sounds small when he asks, “Will you stay on the phone with me until I get back to my dorm?”

“Of course.”

He walks back to his building, and she tells him about the sausage dog that she saw in a purple puffer coat on campus that day and a new song that she heard that she thinks he’d like, saying that she’ll send it to him. He doesn’t say much; just listening to her voice helps him calm down.

The next morning, he wakes up to an email from Nini with the subject line “Picking a Major.” There’s an Excel attachment, and when he opens it, there’s over a hundred different majors listed in the first column. It takes him a second to recognize that it’s all the programs that UCLA offers. A lot of them are in red, but there’s three dozen that are highlighted in yellow. The second column has notes like “a great option—you love music and are great with kids” or “pass—I know you never want to think about Thomas Jefferson again after this semester.” She’s left her thoughts on ever single major in the spreadsheet.

She answers his call after the second ring and tells him, “Obviously it’s your decision, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought it might be helpful to bounce some ideas around with someone new and that it might help you narrow down your options.”

That afternoon, he meets with Ms. Ortiz to finalize his class schedule for next semester, and he brings a list of four majors culled down from Nini’s list to talk through. She smiles when she sees Music Education on the list and says that she thinks it’s a great option for him.

\---

His countdown to Thanksgiving times out when his plane touches down in Salt Lake.

He’s so excited to see everyone, and on Wednesday night, they all pile into Ashlyn’s living room, climbing on top of one another to fit on and around the couch, and watch dumb movies and eat junk food until late into the night.

Gina, Ashlyn and Carlos recount every minute of their senior year production of Anything Goes, and Gina tells him all about her college applications, which includes USC at the top of the list. She promises to tell him when she’s in Los Angeles for a campus visit, and he really likes the idea that a familiar face might end up in the area next year, even if it means her being a traitorous Trojan. Big Red talks about his computer science classes and the video game he’s working on as one of his final projects, and E.J. won’t shut up about the girl he started seeing this semester, insisting on showing off the pictures that they’ve all already seen on Instagram. Kourtney tugs Nini out of his lap to braid her hair, telling everyone stories about her awful roommate Alyssa, but Nini keeps her feet balanced on his thighs and he keeps a hand on her calf.

It’s just like high school but better since he’s spent so much time missing everyone, and his heart feels full enough to burst.

\---

They have sex for the first time the day after Thanksgiving.

His dad is out, taking advantage of Black Friday deals to get a new flatscreen for their living room, and Nini is in his room, and he can’t even tell you the name of the movie that they abandoned from how little they even pretended to pay attention in the first place.

Ricky can say with complete confidence that kissing Nini will never get old. Honestly, he thinks he could survive on her kisses alone. The most frequent kind are the sweet ones, exchanged quickly, and Nini, an avid avoider of gratuitous PDA, relegates as the kind for their parents and friends to see. There are the frenzied, open-mouthed kind that leave his hands shaky and his teenaged virgin self wanting to shrivel up and die on the spot, and there’s the slower kind of kiss, when they feel like they have all the time in the world, that he thinks extends the years of his life.

As he runs his hands up and down her sides languidly, happy to kiss her just like this until the end of time, he would categorize right now as the latter kind of kiss, but when she pulls back a little, his shirt bunched up in her hands, and asks if he wants to have sex, he nods so quickly that he thinks he pulls something in his neck.

“Unless, I mean, are you sure?” he asks as he climbs on top of her, settling in between her legs.

Her hair is fanned out on his pillow, and she nods. “Unless you don’t—”

He cuts her off with a kiss, and he hopes that answers her question. They fumble to remove the rest of their clothes, and he keeps slowing the process to press quick kisses to her mouth, her chin, her eyebrow, basically anywhere he can reach, and she’s smiling when she pulls him down to kiss him back.

It kind of blows his mind—yesterday, he was eating turkey and green bean casserole at the kitchen table with his dad, and now he’s going to have sex with Nini. It used to freak him out how much he likes, _loves_ her, like it shouldn’t be possible for a person to feel as much as he feels for her, but it’s Nini, and it’s not like he can help how intense and consuming his feelings are. She seems to be okay with it.

He can’t stop his hands from shaking, and he concentrates really hard on trying to make Nini feel good, because when his dad explained sex to him, in between wanting to rip his own ears off, he remembers that guys are pretty much ready to go way faster and that girls take longer to warm up— _god_ , his dad’s words, definitely not his, and why is he thinking about his _dad_ right now—but Nini starts to make these breathy noises, her fingertips digging into his shoulder blades, and she offers to help him put on the condom, but he shakes his head, thinking that he might combust if she touches him, and tries to remember what his dad told him about how to do this, but thinking about his dad again, that’s worse than if Nini had helped him.

“Tell me if you want to stop, okay?” he says when he’s over her and there’s nothing left to do other than just go for it, and she nods, and then he does it, he’s inside Nini, and he wants to die.

It’s kind of awkward and definitely rushed, and even though she tells him that it doesn’t hurt, he’s pretty sure that it does for her, but she pushes herself up to kiss him, one hand in his hair, and that does him in, then and there.

Afterwards, she tugs on his hand in order to kiss his cheek, and it feels like his heart is in his throat when he says, “I love you so freaking much.”

He’s not sure what he looks like, but whatever expression he wears makes her laugh, and she tells him, “I love you, too.”

\---

The two weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break are such a blur of wrapping up classes and diving head first into finals that he almost doesn’t have time to miss Nini as much.

Keyword being almost since somehow, he still manages to find the time.

He doesn’t set a new mental countdown clock, though, instead cranking out papers and locking himself in the library with Will, flipping through flashcards and a semester worth of hastily taken notes. He’s stressed, but it feels like a more surmountable level of stressed, on par with the frenetic energy that almost every student on campus seems to have during finals week. After his conversation with Ms. Oritz before Thanksgiving, his slate of classes for next semester includes an introductory education course and music theory, which Nini already promised to help him study for, and he’s actually looking forward to them.

Walking out of his last final on Friday morning is a sigh of relief, and he practically skips through the student center. His flight home is tomorrow, and the endless possibilities of four weeks at home with his friends and family and Nini has never looked sweeter.

“Spring auditions for acapella!” A voice cuts through his thoughts, causing him to almost trip over his Vans as he skids to a stop. The girl behind the table has freckles sprinkled across her nose and dark auburn hair in two French braids, and she catches his pause and repeats herself, more directly, “Would you be interested in signing up for spring auditions?”

Ricky takes in the large poster taped onto the front of the table. SPRING ACAPELLA AUDITIONS is written in large, block letters and surrounding it are small music notes and the names of some of the groups on campus: Sweet Signatures, Measure Up, Noteworthy, Vital Signs.

The girl continues, “We practice twice a week and have fall and winter concerts plus competitions. And we have a ton of fun, too! Each group gets really close, and we all have our own traditions, which, you know, I’d tell you more about but then I’d have to kill you.” She laughs a little at her own joke, and that’s what actually makes Ricky crack a smile.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

She lights up. “Okay? Okay!” She holds out the pen for him to sign up for one of the audition slots, and he adds his name and email to the sheet. “See you at auditions!”

\---

He goes with her moms to pick her up from the airport when she flies home for Winter Break.

As they wait by baggage claim, he feels like he’s buzzing with excitement—they have four full weeks together, laid out in front of them, and he plans to relish the time. He knows that she already has a dozen plans for them: Christmas movie marathon with all of their friends, making homemade peppermint bark, touring the best neighborhoods for Christmas lights, New Year’s Eve in Ashlyn’s basement. It’s going to be the best break ever.

She spots him first and launches herself into his arms, and when he catches her and onto what’s happening, he holds on tight, spinning them around, with no plans on ever letting her go.


End file.
